The Dead and the Undying

Everyone must die. Right men and wrong, affluent and penniless, powerful and powerless—all must die. Millions of funerals emphasize the truth of the statement: “It is appointed unto men once to die …” (Heb. 9:27).

The Lord of life himself confronted the final foe. Jesus knew cosmic powers. He could take a man from the tomb. He could cause a wave to lie down like a pet dog. Yet the Scriptures keep saying, “Christ died.”

We are wearied by men in our time who talk of God’s death. Still, God’s Son did die! He knew no sin. He wronged no man. He broke sin’s grip, healed the ill, forgave the penitent, fed the hungry, comforted the dispossessed and disinherited. Then he, who said that he “came forth from the Father,” faced death like a common man.

Everybody has to die. But most men die without purpose. Life forsakes them and they go, not of their own will. Jesus, however, had a purpose in dying. He did not come into the world simply to live; death was his mission.

Many men have died for noble causes: to save men from slavery, for example, or in some other way give them a better world. But Jesus died for a unique cause. Of the multitudes who have had important missions in life, only one could have performed the mission at Calvary. The unnumbered thousands who have died for noble causes never accomplished what this man accomplished.

The New Testament does not merely state that Christ died. It adds two other words that should move us to rejoicing: “Christ died for us.” No death penalty rested on him; he had violated no law. It was our penalty that he took. “… Christ died for the ungodly” (Rom. 5:6).

It may seem almost incongruous that he whose very name was Life, who came to give men not only life but life eternal, should have for his sign during two millennia the sign of death. We refer to him as the living Son of the living God; yet his emblem is an instrument of death, the cross. And countless crosses on countless churches silently announce what happened long ago on Calvary.

Romans has a line to wrench the heart: “… while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8). He did not wait for us to turn from our wrong ways before he faced the bleak hill of sacrifice. Before we thought of reforming, he marched to embrace the judgment meant for us. This is the thing the New Testament authors could never forget. They stood in awe before the mighty act on Golgotha. It haunted them, charging them to a devotion in duty seldom seen on earth.

As much as the primitive Church stressed the death of Christ, however, it stressed even more what happened after his dying. Even though he had been a willing sacrifice for mankind, death alone was not enough for man’s redemption. There had to be that other thing—the defeat of death through death by life. For life was the one thing that could vanquish death.

To the New Testament witnesses, Christ’s death and resurrection are two parts of one vast act. Over against the naked cross there stands the empty tomb.

Christ did indeed die. But death to those early believers was not the end of life. The grave was not a dead-end street for Christ; it would not be for them. It was a passage to everlasting aliveness. Death was the gateway to deathlessness. Christ confronted the age-old, tormenting, terrifying enemy of man and bore him off captive. This is what those first Christians kept singing down the Roman roads—“Christ died for us! Christ is risen for our justification!”

The death-of-God theologians are not altogether wrong. God did die at Calvary, for Christ is God—or else he is not Christ. But the error of these theologians is the failure to understand that Christ did not remain dead. “It could not be,” cried Peter, “that death should keep him in its grip” (Acts 2:24b, NEB). Jesus was destined to outwit the tomb. He was as seed sown in the dark earth that feels the call of the sun and shatters its sepulcre.

The tragedy is stark in the great chronicle: “Jesus was put “in a sepulchre which was hewn out of a rock.” Be sure of it, he was dead. The mighty heart was silenced. But had he been kept locked in the grave, Christianity would have been locked in with him. “If Christ was not raised, your faith has nothing in it and you are still in your old state of sin” (1 Cor. 15:17, NEB).

The terror of the tomb was shattered; there was a bright jangling somewhere in God’s skies, and a Voice came down on believers like golden thunder: “I am the living one; for I was dead and now am alive for evermore, and I hold the keys of death and Hades” (Rev. 1:18, NEB).

Christ was dead. For one awful, incomparable moment, the grave gripped life’s Lord; the ancient enemy shook his banners under hushed heavens. It was the End—the Beginning! It was an hour like no other since Creation fell from the Creator’s fingers. It was a time to be forever remembered—or forever forgotten. Everything depended on what happened to him who lay in the hollow rock.

But it happened as he had foretold. In his death-march he had never doubted his triumph over the tomb. Like a man speaking of a beautiful day, he had said quietly to his disciples, “I lay down my life to take it up again.… I have power to lay it down and also power to take it up again” (John 10:17b, 18, Moffatt). The tomb stood open-mouthed in astonishment as he walked out of it. “My Lord!” cried a doubting disciple; then, feeling the force of this cosmic phenomenon, he added: “… and my God!” Millions of men through thousands of years would look back to that great hour and declare in the words of the great creed: “I believe in the resurrection of the body.”

“Christ died” means more than a historic happening, for he died for our sins. “Christ is risen” means more than an event; it is a prophecy of our own undying. “Because I live, ye shall live also” (John 14:19100).

Go now, believer, to an unbelieving earth. Announce the good news proclaimed by the primitive disciples: speak the word heralded by Peter at Pentecost, “Death could not hold him” (Acts 2:25b, Moffatt); promise with Paul, “Confess with your mouth that ‘Jesus is Lord,’ believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, and you will be saved” (Rom. 10:9, Moffatt). Go, saying, “If we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him: knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more: death hath no more dominion over him” (Rom. 6:8, 9).

Go, GO!

An Open Letter To Jane Ordinary

DEAR JANE:

I’m writing to help you shake this feeling of uselessness that has overtaken you. Several times you have said that you don’t see how Christ can possibly use you—you’re nobody special.

The Church must bear part of the responsibility for making you feel as you do. I have in mind the success-story mentality of the Church. Our church periodicals tell the story of John J. Moneybags who uses his influential position to witness for Christ. At the church youth banquet we have a testimony from all-American football star Ox Kickoffski, who commands the respect of his teammates when he witnesses for Christ. We’ve led you to think that if you don’t have the leverage of stardom or a big position in the business world, you might as well keep your mouth shut—nobody cares what Christ has done for you.

We have forgotten an elementary fact about Christian witness, something that should encourage you: “God has chosen what the world calls foolish to shame the wise; He has chosen what the world calls weak to shame the strong. He has chosen things of little strength and small repute, yes, and even things which have no real existence to explode the pretensions of the things that are—that no man may boast in the presence of God” (1 Cor. 1:27–29, Phillips).

When Jesus Christ chose his disciples, he didn’t choose Olympic champs or Roman senators. He chose simple people like you. Some were fishermen; one was a political extremist. Another was a publican—a nobody in that society. But these men turned the Roman world upside down for Christ. How did they do it? Through their popularity? They had none. Their position? They had none. Their power was the power of Christ through the Holy Spirit.

Jane, don’t forget that we still need the ordinary in the hands of Christ to turn the world upside down.

Sincerely,

PASTOR BUSTANOBY

Andre Bustanoby is pastor of Arlington Memorial Church—Christian and Missionary Alliance, Arlington, Virginia.

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